WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is starting a new term that is shaping up to be as important as the last one, with the prospect of major rulings about affirmative action, gay marriage and voting rights. Three months after the court upheld President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, the same lineup of justices returns to the bench Monday morning.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's liberals in sustaining the health care law, drawing liberals' plaudits and conservatives' anger. This term's big cases seem likely to have Roberts in his more accustomed role of voting with his fellow conservatives and leave Justice Anthony Kennedy with his typically decisive vote in cases that otherwise split the court's liberals and conservatives.

But Roberts will be watched closely for additional signs that he is becoming less ideologically predictable.

A fight over the University of Texas' affirmative action program is the first blockbuster case on the court's calendar, with argument scheduled for Oct. 10. Texas uses multiple factors, including community service, work experience, extracurricular activities, awards and race, to help fill the last 20 to 25 percent of the spots in its freshman classes. The outcome could further limit or even end the use of racial preferences in college admissions.

The court also is expected to confront gay marriage in some form. Several cases seek to guarantee federal benefits for legally married same-sex couples. A provision of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act deprives same-sex couples of a range of federal benefits available to heterosexual couples.

Several federal courts have agreed that the provision of the law is unconstitutional, a situation that practically ensures that the high court will step in.

A separate appeal asks the justices to sustain California's Proposition 8, the amendment to the state constitution that outlawed gay marriage in the nation's largest state. Federal courts in California have struck down the amendment.

The justices may not even consider whether to hear the gay marriage issue until November.

Another hot topic with appeals pending before the high court, and more soon to follow, is the future of a cornerstone law of the civil rights movement.

In 2006, Congress overwhelmingly approved, and President George W. Bush signed, legislation extending for 25 more years a critical piece of the Voting Rights Act. It requires states and local governments with a history of racial and ethnic discrimination, mainly in the South, to get advance approval either from the Justice Department or the federal court in Washington before making any changes that affect elections.

The court spoke skeptically about the provision in a 2009 decision, but left it mostly unchanged. Now, however, cases from Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas could prompt the court to deal head on with the issue of advance approval. The South Carolina and Texas cases involve voter identification laws; a similar Indiana law was previously upheld by the court.

It is unclear when the justices will decide whether to hear arguments in those cases. Arguments themselves would not take place until next year. The court itself has largely been absent as an issue on the campaign trail.

But the justices could become enmeshed in election disputes, even before the ballots are counted. Suits in Ohio over early voting and provisional ballots appear the most likely to find their way to the justices before the Nov. 6 election, said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine law school.

The first case on the court's calendar Monday is a high-stakes dispute between the business community and human rights advocates over the reach of a 1789 law. The issue is whether businesses and individuals can be sued in U.S. courts for human rights violations that take place on foreign soil and have foreign victims.

Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the 223-year-old Alien Tort Statute has been an important tool in establishing accountability for "human rights atrocities that occur abroad."

Former State Department legal adviser John Bellinger III said the law has become "the bane of the existence of corporations" because suits filed under the law are lengthy and expensive.

Bellinger pointed to one example in which more than 50 companies that did business in South Africa under apartheid more than 30 years ago are facing a lawsuit in New York.

Monday's high court case involves a lawsuit filed against Royal Dutch Petroleum over claims that the oil company was complicit in abuses committed by the Nigerian government against its citizens in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

The court first heard the case in February to consider whether businesses could be sued under the law. But the justices asked for additional arguments about whether the law could be applied to any conduct that takes place abroad.

_________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Antonin Scalia says his method of interpreting the Constitution makes some of the most hotly disputed issues that come before the Supreme Court among the easiest to resolve.

Scalia calls himself a "textualist" and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak in Washington the other day, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them. So Scalia parts company with former colleagues who have come to believe capital punishment is unconstitutional. The framers of the Constitution didn't think so and neither does he.

"The death penalty? Give me a break. It's easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state," Scalia said at the American Enterprise Institute. He contrasted his style of interpretation with that of a colleague who tries to be true to the values of the Constitution as he applies them to a changing world. This imaginary justice goes home for dinner and tells his wife what a wonderful day he had, Scalia said.

This imaginary justice, Scalia continued, announces that it turns out "'the Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean.' No kidding."
As he has said many times before, the justice said the people should turn to their elected lawmakers, not judges, to advocate for abortion rights or an end to the death penalty. Or they should try to change the Constitution, although Scalia said the Constitution makes changing it too hard by requiring 38 states to ratify an amendment for it to take effect.

"It is very difficult to adopt a constitutional amendment," Scalia said. He once calculated that less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, residing in the 13 least populous states, could stop an amendment, he said. In a lengthy question-and-answer session, Scalia once again emphatically denied there's a rift among the court's conservative justices following Chief Justice John Roberts' vote to uphold President Barack Obama's health care law. Scalia dissented from Roberts' opinion.

"Look it, do not believe anything you read about the internal workings of the Supreme Court," he said. "It is either a lie because the press knows we won't respond — they can say whatever they like and we won't respond — or else it's based on information from someone who has violated his oath of confidentiality, that is to say, a non-reliable source. So one way or another it is not worthy of belief."

"We can disagree with one another on the law without taking it personally," he said.
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The issue of gay rights, or more specifically same-sex marriage, is expected to be a big one in the term that began this week. While the justices initially were scheduled to discuss the topic at their private conference in late September, it now appears likely that they will not make a decision about whether to take up a gay marriage case until after the presidential election, which would mean arguments would not take place until the spring.

The justices have a variety of pending appeals they could choose to hear that deal in one way or another with gay marriage.

One set of cases looks at whether same-sex couples who are legally married can be deprived of a range of federal benefits that are available to heterosexual couples. Another case deals with California's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and federal court rulings striking down the amendment. An Arizona case deals with a state law that revoked domestic partner benefits, making them available only to married couples. Arizona's constitution bans gay marriage.

He looks like he could have a heart attack any day now, so here's hoping for the best. I'm pretty sure a megalomaniacal asshat was NOT what the founding fathers wanted in supreme court justices._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

so he's saying it's other justices saying that? but not him at all, even though the constitution says nothing whatsoever about abortion or homosexuality, and no one seems to be citing anything jefferson or adams wrote about abortion or homosexuality, so we really don't have any idea of what they thought of it at the time - but the good justice is certain that they thought exactly what he thinks they ought to have thought.

also, aren't they supposed to actually hear arguments on the actual case before they rule on it? but maybe he figures the founding fathers were expecting judges to rule on they "knew" was right, rather than wasting time on actual facts.

we really, really need a way to get people off the supreme court. i know all the arguments about protecting them in the event they make unpopular decisions - but he's announcing that he's already made his decisions, which means any arguments made before him are irrelevant._________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter

As he has said many times before, the justice said the people should turn to their elected lawmakers, not judges, to advocate for abortion rights or an end to the death penalty

except don't the judges get to decide whether or not a law stands? so if, say, a supreme court justice believes the founders _wanted_ to preserve the death penalty, couldn't he strike down an anti-death-penalty law?_________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter

textualist as in "you can only interpret the constitution pretty much how it was written it is not subject to reinterpretation"

then says "it means pretty much what I said it ought to mean"

It is probably unintending language.

It is still hilarious, even without noting Scalia's tendency to provide a patently skewed "non-reinterpretation"

i think it's a pretty freudian slip, if that term applies. i'm sure it is entirely unintentional, in that he would never, ever, consider what he is doing as "reinterpreting" the constitution. so he certainly wouldn't _say_ that.